


Aftermath Support Group

by BuffyRowan



Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Gen, because things don't end when the episode is over, or when the case is closed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1374280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuffyRowan/pseuds/BuffyRowan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah and Maddie attend a special support group</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath Support Group

**Author's Note:**

> I caught the episodes "You Think You Know Someone" and "Run to Me" close together, and this story was born. None of these are characters we saw more than once, but all of them need support, and help to get past the events we saw in the episodes. This was where I went with that thought.

Maddie looked around as she and Sarah followed the counselor they'd been seeing for court-mandated therapy, try and get the stuff Pete had screwed up in their brain straightened out. She'd picked them up and told them they'd be doing something a little different. She lead them towards a meeting room in the public library, but stopped short of the door, "I'll be waiting in one of the chairs over there." She gestured towards a cluster of armchairs a little way from the door with clear sight lines to both the room door and the library's main door, just in case they thought about trying to ditch her. "You two go in. You don't have to talk, but I want to to at least listen. I think you'll find it helpful."

The group inside the meeting room wasn't exactly what Maddie had expected. She'd figured it was a group for "troubled teens" or "at-risk teens", the usual after-school-special BS. A group of screwups, losers, and social outcasts with a therapist or social worker trying to help them "turn themselves around." There were two moms with their daughters, maybe 7 and 10 years old; a couple college guys who were holding hands like it was the only thing keeping them on the face of the planet; there was a mother and father with a daughter who looked maybe 12; a sprinkling of men and women of various ages, including a couple guys who looked like brothers maybe a little older than her and Sarah; and the weirdest thing was the group leader. She wasn't a social worker or psychologist or anything, for one thing she couldn't be any older than 23. 

"Hi, you must be Maddie and Sarah," She wasn't syrupy, in fact Maddie would be she'd spent some time in foster care or the streets. "My name's Hailey. I'll let some of the others introduce themselves. I'm glad you could come."

"So what is this? Why do we get to learn the secret handshake?" Maddie didn't waste time on being nice. She wanted to know the counselor had signed her and Sarah up for, and why, ASAP. Can't plan for what you don't know about, after all.

Hailey kept smiling as she waved them in, "You get to learn the secret handshake because you've met a very special group of people. When I started this group a few years ago, I called it the Aftermath Support Group. Everyone in this room has lived through something horrible. Some were victims, some of us created the problems. But all of us were saved by the SRU's Team One. But that kind of situation, it doesn't just go away." Hailey swallowed, and she looked like she was trying not to cry, "But those officers put their lives on the line to save us. They spent time, energy, and sometimes blood to make sure that we came out of those dark days alive." Maddie was impressed at how Hailey kept her shit together, and had to respect the way she straightened her shoulders and kept talking, addressing the whole group. "Greg Parker says I saved him as much as he saved me when I was seven. But when I was seventeen, he laid it all on the line to protect me. Again. And his team walked into a meth lab rigged to blow to save him _and _me. I am going to show them that I was worth it, no matter how many bad days I have, or how many nightmares I have about my mother's death."__

The younger of the two brothers spoke up, "My name's Trent. Hailey reached out to me while I was still in prison. Team One arrested me, but if that guy hadn't kept talking to me, making me see what I was really doing, I would have died. I testified against the guy who gave me the bomb, because when I was in the hospital, Sam visited me. He told me what being a soldier is _really _about, instead of the crap I'd been brainwashed with. I've got a second chance now, and I don't want to waste it. But I'm still angry about things, and I can't move past some of it. I'm in therapy, but it's hard to talk to the guy about that day. He's never been there, he doesn't know what it's like to be that desperate to change his life that he'd hold a bomb until seconds before it went off. But here . . . everyone here has been in that kind of day."__

One of the handholders spoke up, "I--I tried to commit suicide. I didn't think anyone could care about me. Mr. Lane . . . he caught me when the rope broke. He caught me," Maddie looked away from his face, uncomfortable with the amount of raw pain in his expression. "I was crying like a baby, and he held me."

The meeting took off from there, various people talking. Some of them were angry, some were depressed. She and Sarah listened to their stories, exchanging glances. Maybe their plan to get away from Pete hadn't worked the way they'd wanted it to, and maybe what they'd done was wrong and/or desperate. But they were in good company, apparently. And maybe they hadn't failed . . . maybe they'd been rescued from themselves. 

Didn't mean she and Sarah couldn't take that road trip to the desert. They just had to put it off a bit. Send Officer Jules a picture of the stars, so she'd see that they'd found them. Show her where she should go . . . if she felt the need to run again, herself.


End file.
